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Wednesday, February 4, 2015

#1279: David Yerushalmi

David Yerushalmi is a lawyer and a political activist, and a
driving force behind the anti-sharia movement in the United States – which
already means that you have to be pretty thoroughly delusional. He is co-founder
and Senior Counsel of the American Freedom Law Center (with Robert Muise),
touted as “the first truly authentic Judeo-Christian public interest law firm” whose mission is “to fight for faith and freedom by advancing and defending
America’s Judeo-Christian heritage and moral foundation through litigation,
education, and public policy program,” and General Counsel to the Center for Security Policy,
a think tank founded by Frank Gaffney.
He is also the principal drafter of the American Laws for American Courts model
legislation, an effort to prevent courts from taking foreign or international
law into account; the legislation is in particular aimed at banning sharia, and has indeed been enacted into law in several states including Louisiana,
Tennessee,
Arizona, Kansas, and Oklahoma. As the American Bar Association, who generally
opposes such measures, puts it, such legislation is “duplicative of safeguards
that are already enshrined in federal and state law,” and rather obviously
aimed at “stigmatiz[ing] an entire religious community.” Of course, some
orthodox Jewish groups have been worried about such measures, since it would
also outlaw halachah. According to Yerushalmi, however, that’s different,
apparently primarily since shariah is Muslim and halachah is not.

- It shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison
to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Islam.

- The Congress of the United States of America shall
declare the US at war with the Muslim Nation or Umma.

- The President of the United States of America shall
immediately declare that all non-US citizen Muslims are Alien Enemies under
Chapter 3 of Title 50 of the US Code and shall be subject to immediate
deportation.

- No Muslim shall be granted an entry visa into the
United States of America.

So, according to Yerushalmi the “War on Terror” should
be a war on Islam “and all Muslim faithful,” and the measures just mentioned would
outlaw Islam and deporting Muslims and other “non-Western, non-Christian”
people with the goal of protecting the United States’ “national character.”
Given his own Jewish background I suppose he might have heard a thing or two
about the efficacy of introducing such measures.

Yerushalmi is also very much opposed to a politically
correct culture that prevents him from questioning why “the founding fathers
did not give women or black slaves the right to vote.” Indeed, “There is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black
slaves the right to vote. You might not agree or like the idea but this
country’s founders, otherwise held in the highest esteem for their
understanding of human nature and its affect on political society, certainly
took it seriously. Why is that? Were they so flawed in their political
reckonings that they manhandled the most important aspect of a free society –
the vote? If the vote counts for so much in a free and liberal democracy as we
‘know’ it today, why did they limit the vote so dramatically?” Indeed. He has also called black people “the most murderous of peoples.”

But Yerushalmi is also your standard wingnut across the
board, and has not been exclusively occupied with his paranoid anti-Islam
delusions and racism. In 2010, Yerushalmi and Muise filed the first federal
lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act, complaining about the “government’s takeover of the
healthcare industry.” When they lost they, predictably subscribing to the
rightwing myth of “activist judges,” described the judges as having made “a political decision.”

Diagnosis: Pretty close to being a standard white
supremacist. A lot of people seem nevertheless more than willing to listen to
him. A scary fellow.

1 comment:

Breitbart misogynist milo yiannopoulosDrew Zahn of WorldNetDailySher Zieve of RenewAmerica (while she is rather obscure and not very influential, she more than makes up for it in sheer unbridled batshit insanity)I found someone named Tony Zirkle on RationalWiki, but I don't think he's relevant enough for much more than brief honorable mentionAnarchist political philosopher John Zerzan, who thinks civilization is "oppressive" and believes that telepathy is the natural way for living organism to communicate. Seriously, this guy is nuttier than a fruitcake.